Logic and the language faculty

Abstract:

In this note I address one of the issues raised in Chomsky’s “The Galilean Challenge,” namely how the basic mechanisms of Universal Grammar (“merge”) can produce a natural logic, i.e. a system for drawing sound inferences, in interaction with possibly language independent ‘proto-logical’ operations. I also give some examples of how a ‘natural logic’ is indeed intertwined with grammar and constitutes the main source of our capacity for ‘creating meaning’.

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